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Gonski bill lacks funding detail: schools

Katina Curtis

Parliament is considering legislation to set up a new school funding system but there is still little detail available about how that will work.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard says Labor will target and eradicate the "great moral wrong" of children not having access to educational opportunities.

"This is a distinctively Labor plan for a matter of the highest Labor purpose: to eradicate the great moral wrong which sees some Australian children denied the transformative power of a great education," she told the lower house on introducing the bill on Wednesday.

The legislation initiating the government's response to the Gonski schools funding review enshrines in law "our nation's expectations for our children's achievements at school".

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It outlines the goals for school improvement and the principles underpinning how these would be achieved.

But it does not detail how a new funding system would work, nor make any mention of the estimated $6.5 billion a year the commonwealth and state and territory governments will have to stump up.

In fact, the accompanying explanatory memorandum says "there is no financial impact associated with the bill".

Australian Education Union federal president Angelo Gavrielatos is confident Labor will achieve the proposed funding reform.

"Not only are we confident, we have every expectation that an agreement will be achieved between the commonwealth and the states," he told reporters in Canberra.

"The state premiers must step up now and negotiate in earnest."

The Independent Schools Council of Australia (ISCA) also urged governments to quickly finalise details so they could be incorporated into the legislation.

"This is the only way to provide school communities with an assurance that there will be a stable, fair, robust and transparent funding of independent schools from the commencement of 2014," it said in a statement.

"The prime minister calls this a uniquely Labor bill and she is right - it is all spin over substance, a classic Labor hoax," he said.

The Australian Greens used softer language but were also disappointed by the lack of detail.

Leader Christine Milne said it was "not very satisfactory" to finish the year without a funding plan and repeated calls for the mining tax loophole around state royalties to be plugged and the money used for education.

Ms Gillard told parliament she had anticipated there would be "voices of opportunism and negativity" but she was determined to get the reform done.

"Making sure no child misses out on the education which could change his or her life has been the ruling passion of my life," she said.

The bill also contains a clause stating nothing contained in the laws will be legally enforceable.

However, federal schools minister Peter Garrett has previously said the legislation would be changed once agreement was reached with states, territories and private education authorities.

The nation's education ministers are expected to provide initial advice on the structure of a funding system to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) meeting on December 7.

Ms Gillard wants COAG to sign off on the funding agreement at its first meeting next year, likely to be in March.